He’s the one said it was from my blog. I figured he must be posting from the future, after I shall have posted it. So to avoid changing history, I had to post it here. Sacred duty and all that.

However, as in most matters, it would seem that a Christian conception of authority should turn the human model on its head, placing the most powerful at the bottom supporting the rest. This one works with God. No human can support more than he is. God, however, can invert the pyramid, supporting all creation on Himself. Or, rather, He is both base and pinnacle; the transcendent head, creator and ruler and imminent root of our existence.

Just kidding.

“Contemporary culture honors the rebel above all other authority. The rebel enjoys highest status and greatest power. The rebel is the Establishment.” So True!

What of others, who are outside, in the secular culture?

“There is no outside. There is no place where God is not, even now. Even those who do not know the truth of Christ are also created, beloved, and known by Him. He is closer to them than their own breath, though they do not know Him. We work together with God so that every person can come to saving knowledge of Christ, and be healed and transformed alongside us.” Powerful!!!

Hope you enjoy. Directly after reading that one, I read Becoming a True Spiritual Community, by Larry Crabb, which was an excellent follow-up. Looking at what the church COULD be, if we got past all this stuff, and could just love each other, in our brokenness. What if we could be safe with each other, rather than safe from each other? What if our desire to actually obey Christ elbowed out the religious pressure to behave like good people?
As much as Pagan Christianity opened my mind to some interesting things, Larry Crabb’s book broke my heart.

Some things I’d hope the authors note… the earliest Christians were Jews, used to worshiping in synagogues; Justin Martyr and many others described how that liturgical life developed in the early Church. And while the modern Protestant model of pastor as unitary executive is foreign to pretty much all Christianity before the Radical Reformation, we do have accounts from first-century witnesses like Ignatius who put the New Testament descriptions of servant leadership into context for us. How did first-century Christians worship, order and grow their communities, and so on? It’s not hard to ask them - they were pretty prolific writers :-)

One place where I expect I’ll differ from Viola and Barna is on the role of Scripture. The New Testament was written to churches that were already functioning (or dysfunctioning) and the recipients of the Epistles only needed the apostles’ corrective notes. The NT doesn’t provide a blueprint for creating (or re-creating) the Church; it’s not meant to, since the NT comes after the Church already existed.

Anyway, I’ll give The Pagan Church a serious read and see about writing a review. Thanks for the recommendation!

This piece does have an unfortunate “us vs. them” attitude though, which I would imagine makes the reading difficult for those Protestants feeling slapped in face by the content, let alone the content’s presentation.

Short answer, though: I serve in a parish of the Russian Orthodox Church. The difference between Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox (or Bulgarian or Albanian)or whatever is about like the difference between American Presbyterians and Korean Presbyterians: there are ethnic and cultural differences, but they’re pretty much on the same page.

With Orthodox Christians it’s even more so. When I visit the Greek parish in the next town over, or the Antiochian (Arab) parish a little further down the highway, it’s all familiar: it’s the same faith and we all pray the identical Liturgy. What’s different is mostly the language of the chatter over coffee after the service. In the Liturgy, the Russians tend to like choirs and harmony, while the Greeks tend have cantors singing distinctly Middle-Eastern melodies - but under the music, the hymn texts and the prayers are the same.

It’s been said that most any Orthodox bishop could finish any other Orthodox bishop’s sentences for him :-)

In any case, great poem here from the 5th Century.

Edgar.